Blogroll Links Discouraged by Google?

[Joe Cline Austin]

I was reading about wordpress today and came across this article excerpt and was wondering what everyone thought about this. I guess it kind of makes sense, but I couldn't find any recognized SEO expert that confirmed this.

In reality, links added by WordPress blogroll is actually useless textlinks that are discouraged by Google and most other search engines, especially when the links are paid off or in exchange for a link back.

Thus, linking blindly to external sites MAY (if your blog or website has been caught and labeled by Google machine algorithm as participate in illegal link scheme to boost page rank, although you’re not) severaly negatively discount your own site PageRank (PR) value, or worst, affects your site ranking in search engine results positioning. To avoid any potential backlash from the external links in Blogroll, it’s best to add rel=”nofollow” attribute to the <a> tag in Blogroll as suggested by Google so that no PageRank value is passed through the links, and the links won’t penalize your site ranking.

To automatically add and attach rel=”nofollow” attribute to each and every outgoing links in Blogroll, we need to hack through WordPress core source code file. Go to wp-includes/ directory of your blog root folder, then edit the bookmark-template.php file with any text editor such as vi.

Locate the following line (it’s at line 48 for Wordpress version 2.3.1):

$output .= '<a href="' . $the_link . '"' . $rel . $title . $target. '>';

Append the rel=”nofollow” to the line by changing the line to the following:

$output .= '<a href="' . $the_link . '"' . $rel . $title . $target. ' rel="nofollow">';

[Ryan Ward]

What was the source of this "SEO advice"?

I still go back to this - Are you linking to someone because a reader of your blog might also find something else interesting on your "recommended" blog on your blogroll or are you linking to increase your rankings?

If you think it's a good fit for readers, go for it.

[Joe Cline Austin]

Here's where I saw the post, but it's out there in other places too.
http:// www. mydigitallife. info/2007/11/05/add-nofollow-relationship-to-wordpress-blogroll-to-increase-pagerank/

The reason I see it as a potentially good move is that those links (on my site anyway) persist throughout the site. Maybe google would think it's a paid link?

I dunno.

[kid disco]

The key phrase there is:

linking blindly to external sites

[Ryan Ward]

I'm not sure I would add nofollow to a link that is reciprocating back. That seems somewhat unethical (at least to me) so if you have outgoing links that you want to nofollow, why do you even have the links? Are they providing your readers with additional value? If not, just remove the links. Also keep in mind that you cannot selectively nofollow. All of your blogroll links will then be nofollowed.

I suppose in a technical sense you are sending some PR away from your site, but, it also sounds to me like SEO tunnelvision (an illness that I sometimes suffer from).

[Joe Cline Austin]

I just started my blog like two weeks ago or something like that. I wanted to make it a useful resource so I was thinking about adding things like links to the appraisal districts, property search pages, texas real estate commission, etc. They aren't really to other people yet, but are for sure useful. Maybe blogroll, as the name implies, is the wrong place for the links now that I think about it. The sites are widely recognized and so I don't think the issue would be with linking to bad sites, but I don't know much about the google changes with paid links, etc.

[Lydia]

The whole point of using a blogroll is to point out sites you like, sites that share your topic, friends of yours, or useful information for your readers. If you are using a blogroll in that fashion, I hardly see why that should incur a penalty.

I could care less about reciprocal links back. In fact, I would be surprised to have a standout site in a given topic that wouldn't have those links reciprocated (everybody links to the standout).

My ahem..take..on the whole topic:
Unless Google is a whole lot better than I think they are, they haven't developed any algorithm that can detect intent behind a link. Their first attempt to show link sellers using the PR bar was a disaster. They don't need to go after blogrolls. Why make the mess worse?

[ericbramlett]

My ahem..take..on the whole topic:
Unless Google is a whole lot better than I think they are, they haven't developed any algorithm that can detect intent behind a link. Their first attempt to show link sellers using the PR bar was a disaster. They don't need to go after blogrolls. Why make the mess worse?

Great quote, Lydia. I tend to take the "use common sense" view on this one. Is it natural to blogroll to a few sites? Absolutely - that's what they're there for. Is it natural to blogroll to 50 sites? Maybe, but it's not natural to have 50 reciprocal blogroll links. (at least IMO.)

[arscherer]

Great quote, Lydia. I tend to take the "use common sense" view on this one. Is it natural to blogroll to a few sites? Absolutely - that's what they're there for. Is it natural to blogroll to 50 sites? Maybe, but it's not natural to have 50 reciprocal blogroll links. (at least IMO.)

I just started my blog a little while back, but I deifnitely agree with this comment! I have seen blogs that have a roll of about 50-75 sites and it is so tedious to even browse through the sites suggested.

Just like you said, I would use common sense with this one, and really link to the sites that you think would be either beneficial for your audience, or sites that really interest you. Just my opinion, but great question!

[Bigtoe]

The big g is faltering and they can't fix it so they are doing a lot of huffing and puffing. If they had an algo for this or even one in the works it would be kept top secret.

It is time for them to spend some of those billions and develop algos that just analyse content. This whole link thing is antiquated.